In October 1950, Communist China invaded Tibet. After nine years of difficult cohabitation with the occupiers, the Dalai Lama, the young temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetans, had no choice but to flee his country to take refuge in India. It took 20 years for the Tibetans to renew a dialogue with the leaders in Beijing. Soon after Deng Xiaoping's return to power in 1978, the first contacts were made. Using rare documents, this is the story of thirty years of encounters between the Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala and Beijing.

Today the stalemate continues; Beijing refuses to offer any sort of concession to the Dalai Lama's demand for a genuine autonomy for Tibet. Just like the border 'talks' between India and China, the negotiations with Dharamsala have never really started.

Reading through this book one understands how the relations between India and China are inextricably linked to the status of Tibet. Further, the present unrest in Tibet renders China unstable and increasingly belligerent towards India which gave refuge to the Tibetans.

Negotiations That Never Were: Dharamsala and Beijing, Claude Arpi, Lancer Publishers, Hardcover, 294 pp, $18.95

Born in France, Claude Arpi has been an enthusiastic student of the history of Tibet, China, and the Indian subcontinent for the past thirty-five years. After graduating from Bordeaux University in 1974, he decided to settle in India, where he continues to stay with his wife Abha and daughter Smiti. He is the author of Tibet, le pays sacrifi� (2000), La politique frantaise de Nehru: 1947�1954, Cachemire, le paradis perdu, Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreemen, India and Her Neighbourhood, Tibet: The Lost Frontier, and Dharamsala and Beijing: The Negotiations That Never Were. , The Statesman, and other Indian and French publications. He is also an editorial consultant and a regular contributor to the Indian Defense Review.